


the vines of tall trees

by Anonymous



Category: Vinland Saga (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Norse Religion & Lore, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Brother/Brother Incest, Dubcon Daemon Touching, Fylgjur As Daemons, M/M, Manipulation, No Sex, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25081003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Olmar isn't satisfied with his outcome.
Relationships: Thorgil/Olmar (Vinland Saga)
Kudos: 1
Collections: Anonymous





	the vines of tall trees

**Author's Note:**

> @vincestsaga on twitter for more brocontent👍
> 
> Fylgjur (singular: fylgja) are spirits from Norse mythology that are something like familiars or guiding spirits. Here I'm combining them with some of the daemon lore from His Dark Materials. Basically they're daemons, but they don't talk. Touching/settling aren't _exclusively_ associated with the onset of puberty, but touching someone's fylgja is a very intimate experience that does often go hand in hand with sexuality. (See GuriAto in [my first fic in this verse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22410826).)

Olmar cries for three days straight when his fylgja settles. _She_ doesn't seem all that bothered by it, but Thorgil always used to say that fylgjur know from the beginning what they're going to be. They could at least give you some advance warning that you're going to be humiliated every time you leave your room for the whole rest of your life.

His one consolation is that his brother and his sister are both long gone when it happens. They would've loved this—or hated it, it's hard to tell with them and it might as well be the same thing. Either way, they wouldn't have shut up about it for years. He'd like to see them again, of course, what kind of weirdo is scared of seeing his own family, but maybe— _maybe_ —it'd be nice if they waited until he's had some time to whip Bofrid into something more intimidating.

* * *

She isn't, when Thorgil shows up a few years later. And she still doesn't care. She doesn't join him in his sword practice, like Thorgil's fylgja used to. She doesn't even look interested. She doesn't like any of the armor he bought her, all of it custom-made by a guy who kept himself from laughing long enough to take the money. Yeah, it's all kind of heavy, but improving yourself isn't supposed to be easy.

"I've told you not to keep her hidden, boy," is the first thing Dad says to him when they sit down. "No one likes seeing a man without his fylgja about. It unsettles people."

"What's the point of us owning all this shit," Olmar says back, "if she can't stand where she wants? She likes being in the shade."

He has a lot of practice keeping her out of sight. The two of them have learned how to stay pretty far away from each other. They have to move together, of course, to keep from getting _really_ separated. When he's around people, though, she knows to stay as far away as she can.

"What'd you get, a fish?" Thorgil heaps another, smaller sausage on on his plate and then lifts his knife again, searching the table. "Speaking of fish."

Olmar takes another look at Dad's face and groans. "Ugh, fine. She's a chicken, okay?" He can't stand to have Thorgil see her without at least being prepared. "She turned into a chicken when I was fifteen."

"A chicken's a fine domestic animal," Dad says. "Perfectly suited for a farmer."

No one else in their family has a bird, is the part Dad keeps pretending isn't a problem. Birds are supposed to be best for women, but even his mom and sister managed to have fylgjur in the form of carnivores, a stoat and a wolverine. Grandpa's badger still digs around in the fields by his side, and they're supposed to be pretty dangerous in a fight. Dad's hedgehog is the most embarrassing one of all the nursing animals, and Olmar always figured he'd at least manage to beat that.

The birds and the domesticated animals on the farm have always been the ones that follow the slaves and hired hands around. Some of the freed men, too, but Dad picks them out like that in the slave markets. He stopped taking on chicken men and rooster women when Bofrid settled—as if Olmar wouldn't notice—but he always makes a big deal about how you can tell a man's destiny from the shape his companion takes. People with domestic animals make the least trouble and work the hardest. It sure isn't a sheep or a cow that follows his personal maid around, though. Not even a chicken or a turkey. No, it's a lapwing that perches silently on her shoulder, where even Mom's stoat doesn't dare to climb up and snap at him.

Lapwings are really common birds, but she is pretty.

"Fifteen!" is all Thorgil says. It's a late age to settle. It's not embarrassing, exactly, because no one can agree what it means. It just isn't what happens in their family.

Roskva's wolverine always puzzles people. They don't come this far down in Denmark, so unless you've traveled, it's hard to tell at first glance what he is. There were some rumors when he settled that it must mean Roskva's real father was a man from Sweden or Norway or something, but her hair is so obviously from their dad that the rumors died pretty quickly. She was upset at first that it wasn't something that's supposed to signal a good wife, but it didn't take long for her get used to his new shape. She was thirteen then anyway, already engaged, and she was married a year later.

And then there's the grey wolf who never leaves Thorgil's side. Nobody was surprised when she settled, least of all Thorgil. Wolves are the most distinguished of animals in battle. (That's how old people say the coolest.) He was eleven when it happened. Even early settles are usually around twelve. Olmar barely remembers a time when his brother‘s fylgja could shift.

"It doesn't mean anything. She was just... y'know. Thinking." There's no rule that says it's embarrassing to settle late. It's just, if Thorgil thinks it is, then it doesn't matter what the rules say. "There's some fowl in the stories about the gods. Poetry and shit." He likes _fowl_ better than _chicken_. It sounds more dignified.

"You're thinkin' of roosters. You know, the ones with balls. Or whatever they have."

Thorgil's wolf stares intently at Bofrid as she emerges from under the house, moving cautiously into the light with her strange bobbing walk. Olmar's never seen the wolf anything but quiet, but he thumps nervously on the seat of his chair, calling Bofrid over closer to him. She hops into his lap, claws scraping the fabric of his trousers, and for once he wraps his arms around her, trying to keep her from withering under that yellow gaze.

"They're pretty strong, actually. You know how lame Grandpa's looks, but badgers are really fierce if you mess with them? Chi—they're like that. They can really rip each other up. People just know them for the wrong thing."

"Gramps did okay for himself, but I'd be looking more at Dad, if I was you. They were a real whirlwind back in their fighting days." Thorgil rips a leg off the whole bird sitting in front of him, then starts in on the body instead.

Dad's fylgja is sitting at her special place beside Dad's plate. As usual. It's a little piece of wood sized for a hedgehog to sit on, with a hollow in the center and grooves for her paws. It's all fancy and carved on the other side, not that you can see any of that when she's using it. Olmar always thinks that it looks like Dad's saving her for dessert.

"Uh..." Olmar looks at her beady little black eyes and at Dad nearly eating the napkin his handmaid's holding up for him. "You serious?"

"As a heart attack. They're legends!" The wolf's expression never changes, even when Thorgil laughs. "Don't be so modest, Dad. You should tell the poor kid a few stories from your youth. Let him have a little hope."

The hedgehog throne wobbles dangerously. All that stupid carving. Dad keeps trying to find something she'll like made out of gold, but she won't accept anything but wood. She has a little sling to ride in that goes over the shoulder, of course, like most fylgjur that have to follow working men around. But at mealtimes, out comes the wooden throne. Carrying it around is Dad's maid's job, and it honestly makes Olmar embarrassed for her. This must be the absolute stupidest thing Dad makes her do.

"Thorgil," Dad says, wiping his face with a second napkin. "You've had a long journey. Perhaps she'd like to rest inside."

"Ah, she's used to it. She walks everywhere."

Olmar always wonders if their parents know her name, and just don't say it out of politeness. Even in front of him. It's supposed to be pretty common, saying your fylgja's name when you're just learning to talk. Of course, he's not even sure the two of them exchanged fylgja names when they got married. He's pretty sure his sister knows his. Or at least she always acted like she had something up on him. But as the youngest one in the family, he never had the chance to find out the name of anybody's fylgja.

It's not that big a deal. He just thinks of them all as _him_ and _her_ , like you do with people outside the family. Just kind of annoying, when he remembers it.

"Can't get tired until I do," Thorgil says, leaning down to give his wolf a pat on the head. Her yellow eyes close for the first time as his thumb scritches behind her ear. Olmar wonders where she was when his brother was getting those scars on his hand.

"What about you, Olmar? She overheats, doesn't she?"

Olmar hunches over Bofrid. He'd love to get her inside and away from a few of the farmhands, at least, but he's not giving in before anyone else does. "We're fine. She can go under the table if she needs to."

"You seem to be finished with your food. I think we'd better start moving inside." Dad claps for his maid, who's been waiting off to one side.

"I'm not done!" he protests. "I'm starving, here!"

"Forget it, Olmar." With his knife, Thorgil spears the half sausage in front of him and piles it on his own stack. "Read the room."

There's no point arguing with Dad when he wants some crazy thing. But there's more business to take care of before they go inside. As Snake and his fylgja slither forward, Olmar sneaks another look at the wolf. She doesn't look right _at_ anyone, exactly, but her eyes move to meet whatever's moving, and her ears swivel occasionally to take in sounds too soft for human ears. It's hard to tell if Thorgil's eyes move exactly in time with hers. He'd have to watch them for a while, and he doesn't want to get caught doing that.

* * *

The room he sleeps in isn't much more than a bed and the chair he kicks around when he's in a bad mood. There's a door—because of the chair, probably. Olmar leaves it open in the winter to let in the heat from the fire. It's closed but not latched when Thorgil comes in, and he doesn't latch it behind him. 

"You always stay up this late? You'll never get any taller like this."

"I'm just thinking." Olmar looks at Bofrid on the chair. She's stopped preening. Instead she's watching the wolf who oozed into the room right before or after Thorgil. "About stuff."

"You've never seen any chickens but the spoiled ones here on the farm, have you?"

Of course he'd be able to tell. "I know _about_ them." Farm animals are about the only shit he's allowed to know about. "They can fuck each other up when they have to. I'm not embarrassed or anything, I'm just thinking." 

"And they eat meat. If that's what has you so worried. They're better off if they do."

"Great. So I just have to starve us until she decides to start eating me, and then I'll look like less of an idiot." None of the chickens here ever get hungry enough to fight. Bofrid looks at him, as wordless as ever. She always has the same look of keen interest as the real hens who look up at him from the pen where they spend their lives shitting and laying eggs until they're ready to be eaten. Then they look back down at the bugs on the ground, just as keenly.

"Or try rolling the dice one more time."

Olmar looks up sharply. "What do you mean? Like getting a new one?"

"Touching one of them's a pretty big deal. Sometimes it's enough to make them settle."

"Not for me," Olmar hastens to assure him. "I mean, nobody ever touched her, not that I've never—I'm not stupid, I don't do the touching thing when I'm getting some." Lots of people do, but he's heard some parents insist you get married if you touch their daughter's fylgja. And he doesn't want to find out just how much of a wimp Dad is.

Back when he could trust her, he'd get Bofrid to turn into something cool while he was doing it with a girl. Usually a wolf. Peasant houses are too small to fit a bear inside. Plus wolves have to be cooler than bears, or his brother would have a bear. Bofrid never looked as big as he remembered Thorgil's fylgja, but the way things are now he'd give anything for even a wolf puppy.

"Doesn't have to be somebody you're fucking. I guess you could call her a virgin, though, if all that's true."

She squawks. Loud.

"Bofrid! Shut up already!" It's bad enough when she does that outside. It sounds even worse in his tiny room, with his brother listening. It's a horrible barking sound that even Dad and Mom can probably hear behind their thick door, but she does stop when he yells. The wolf doesn't even blink.

"That her name?" 

Olmar reddens at how easily it slipped out. "Um, yeah. I guess."

"You shouldn't be jumping at anything your own fylgja does." Thorgil leans over her, casting a long shadow in the candle's light. Studying her. "Can't you tell when she's about to move?"

The wolf must've let him know. He didn't jump at all. Olmar wonders for a second how differently their fylgjur _see_. If there's a cast of black over everything Bofrid sees, and a gold one over the wolf's.

Thorgil's gaze passes over his fylgja, as unblinking as the wolf's. Olmar lets her cluck softly, but when the volume starts to rise he wills her quiet with a furious effort.

His brother doesn't seem to notice the noise or its sudden stop. "Yeah," he says at last. "I see the resemblance."

"Do Dad and Mom know..." Olmar hesitates; even _your fylgja_ seems too rude. He moves his elbow in the general direction of the big grey wolf watching them all with a steady gaze. "Do they know her name?"

"Dunno. I've never asked. Why would they?"

"I just thought maybe... It's kinda normal, right? When you're family?" His voice squeaks up a little, trying not to sound like he's calling Thorgil weird. "People in the village talk like it is. Sometimes."

"And how many of them ended up where I am?" Thorgil seems to consider him. "Well, you'll be getting married, I guess. You can hand her name over along with your balls, if it's that important to you."

"So nobody knows but you?" Dad and Mom don't act like they have anything over on Thorgil. Maybe they know Bofrid's name and that's why Olmar's stuck here at home.

"It's on a need-to-know basis." Thorgil turns away from Bofrid, finally, and grins at him. "And nobody but me needs to know."

"But I thought you were a thegn now. They ask your names for that. Do they not do the pledge until he's really a king?"

"Nah, I did the whole thing. I gave him _a_ name."

"You lied to a prince?" Too late, Olmar remembers what his brother was saying at dinner. "Or a king, or—?"

"Look," Thorgil says, with a patience that's starting to wear thin. "The name I gave the king is what he calls her. So it's her name. I'm Thorgil, son of Ketil. When I'm a little older, they'll start calling me something cooler. Something forged in battle. Is that name gonna be a lie?"

"No," Olmar says, turning red again. "I get it. I was just saying, if I didn't get it, that—that might be what I'd say."

"Yeah, that happens a lot with you, huh. So? What do you say?"

"About what?"

"About trying again. If you're that torn up about it, might as well actually try something."

"But she's settled already. You mean— _again_ , again? Making it happen all over again? How?"

"Something I've heard around. Some men only really come into their own on the battlefield, long after their fylgja's settled. The story goes that every once in a while, one of them gets shaken up enough to settle again, into one that suits them better."

That's nothing like anything Olmar's ever heard about fylgjur. But war's nothing like his life here. He looks at the wolf, imaging a hand-shaped mark standing out in gold on her fur. His brother's the last man in the world who'd need help to re-settle his fylgja, though. If this works it'll be Bofrid with the mark. Not on her brown speckled feathers, but maybe—maybe on grey fur. 

The wolf takes up so much space in the room. Bofrid probably wouldn't like being in here all the time if she were that big. They'd have to move into the storage room, or even one of the other buildings. Hell, he'd build a new building for them himself, if he could do it with a wolf by his side.

"You really think that happens? Is it something they do in England? Who told you?"

"Just stories the veterans talk about around the fire. Could be an old wives' tale. Or whatever you call it when there's no wives involved." Thorgil grins, all teeth. "At the very least it'd prove you have the guts to try."

"Is there... is it a magic thing? Do I need to do something special?" Girls are supposed to do magic with knots and spinning and things like that. Images swirl before his eyes, and he puts a hand on the bed to steady himself. If there's a womanly ritual Thorgil probably wouldn't want him to mess around with it, but going to a witch and paying her to do it can't be the same as doing it himself. He thinks about plucking Bofrid and draping a wolf pelt over her by the light of a full moon.

It wouldn't be fun, of course. But it'd be _doing_ something. She'd understand later. If it worked.

"Nothin' like that. No magic that I ever heard about. Just someone touching it. Doesn't even matter who." Thorgil's long arms stretch, too wide for the room. "It's simple enough. You could try right now."

"Now?" Olmar looks at Bofrid's dark eyes. She always looks a little bit concerned no matter what's going on. _Yeah, you_ do _have to stay there_ , he tells her, concentrating hard to force the feeling into her. His heart is pounding behind his ears, and he wonders if she feels it too. If she even has ears. "Right now? You mean you'd do it?"

"That's what I've been saying. Nobody's gotta know but us." Thorgil favors Bofrid with a wide grin. "And them, of course. But who are they going to tell?"

Thorgil said it was whether you've changed a lot. He's got to be different now from when he was fifteen. He's mature now. He's been through so much since she settled like this— _because_ she settled like this. That has to count for something.

It's a lot of work making Bofrid stay still. Instead of answering he just nods a couple times, trying not to look too excited. Maybe she'll be smarter as a wolf. Or anything else. Anything's fine. Even another bird, as long as it looks cool.

Thorgil lets out a chuckle. "If I didn't know you so well, I'd think you were trying to live up to something." He's still speaking when he reaches down, and Olmar doesn't even have time to hold his breath.

Contact feels like raw meat crawling behind his ribs. The base of his spine stings and for a few seconds—or longer, maybe—he can't tell if he's still sitting up. The wolf's eyes are wide and staring, stark yellow against their black outline.

"Don't start rubbing yourself all over the floor." Thorgil's voice sounds like it's coming from another room.

"Sorry," Olmar says, around his own tongue. It doesn't feel the right size in his mouth, and his brain doesn't feel right in his head.

"Figured I'd feel something on my end," Thorgil muses. To himself. Olmar doesn't have anything to say back, anyway.

He can tell, dimly, when his brother's hand lets go of his fylgja. All it does is leaves him unbalanced in an empty world. It's a relief to be touched himself. Olmar feels like he's about on the floor, but Thorgil grabs his collar and tugs him up, knuckles on the back of his neck. The only thing that feels warm right now. He settles bonelessly on the bed, and they're gone.

"Sorry," he says again, more clearly.

"What for?"

"I-I don't know." Olmar tries to grip the edge of the bed. Bofrid's rigid on the chair, squatting in a tiny ball with her wings clenched in close. He feels something else warm, something rolling down his cheek. "She's so stupid."

"Do _not_ fucking cry on me."

It feels like the hand on his head could snap shut and kill him, if it wanted to. But before he's done thinking it, Thorgil's just digging his knuckles into the top of his skull.

"I'm not crying. It's just, it didn't work! She looks so dumb." Olmar wipes his forearm across his whole face, his sleeve catching a few fat tears.

"I said it might work. Not would. Not even probably."

"You know how lame she is. Everybody can tell the second they see me. She's just a dumb farm animal."

"What they see," Thorgil says, "is how lame you are."

"It's the same thing." Bofrid's eyes are still closed. For the first time ever she feels quiet inside him. All Olmar can feel is the trembling. He can't tell which of them it is.

"Didn't I fucking tell you? Does anything I say sink in? Chickens are survivors. They eat meat, all right. They eat each _other_ if they have to!"

"I've never seen them do that," Olmar mutters.

"Who gives a shit what you've seen? You think fylgjur do the work for you?" Thorgil's still looming over him, one hand squeezing his head. The wolf is sitting up at attention, but Olmar can tell they're not completely serious. Or maybe he just can't feel scared with Bofrid frozen like that.

"I know, I know." The wolf has a couple of scars, but nowhere near as many as Thorgil. Killing people's fylgjur doesn't get you into Valhalla. They'll fight each other occasionally, but no real man sets his fylgja after humans.

"I do my own fighting. And you'll do yours, if you ever decide to let your balls drop." His brother feels too big for this tiny room. Too big for the farm. No wonder he never comes back.

"But you look cooler than a guy who did all the same shit with a cow following him around."

"Well, yeah." Thorgil throws his head back and laughs. "But I'd make a cow work, if I had to. You _make_ your fylgja strike fear into the hearts of your enemies." Thorgil gives his head a final shove back, and when his hand lifts Olmar feels naked and empty again. "Or sit around doing fuck-all with your life. Your call."

The wolf stands up before Thorgil even turns, and Olmar knows there's no point in answering. Thorgil's bored. They move in step, her stride the same length as his. She doesn't look back at Olmar. She never does.

Thorgil doesn't shut the door all the way this time. If he looks back, Olmar's not looking when it happens.

For once, he doesn't have to shoo Bofrid off the bed. She stays where she is on the chair and doesn't bother him. His stomach feels a little bit empty and a little bit cold, but not enough to go root through the stores for something to eat. Besides, he has a few dim memories of stumbling across the wolf's eyes in the middle of the darkness. He doesn't want to find out if he still screams now that he's a grown man.

The only thing he can feel from Bofrid is shivering. Her eyes don't shine in the dark like the wolf's do. The shivering goes through his whole upper body, in chills like he's come down with something that lasts for a whole horrible night and departs with the dawn, but he knows lighting a candle won't help.

It might've been a mistake asking for this. If it had _helped_ , at least, he'd have something to look forward to. He wakes long before dawn, his heart racing from dreams of something being shaken by the neck, and when his eyes adjust to the dark he sees his fylgja's outline down on the floor. She's not moving. It looks like she's brooding. Like a real hen, even though she doesn't lay.

It's completely dark without the candle, but Olmar doesn't get up, or make Bofrid get up and stop being weird. Instead he watches, and feels at her outline in the blackness, trying to touch around the raw edges of something inside him.

It's never occurred to him before, but there is one lucky thing about the way she settled. If a hen fylgja can brood, then Olmar's lucky as hell that he's not lying in bed right now waiting for a cock to crow.


End file.
